Design. Poetry. Soccer. Cake. Beer.

Eight years after the first Service Design Network conference debuted in Amsterdam, we returned to the city of canals, bikes, and bitterballen to host our ninth annual conference. Since that first conference, we’ve certainly come a long way. Attendance has grown from 220 that first year to 650 this year. And we had two full days of speakers and workshops, as well as an additional members day program and some master classes.

I gave a talk on members day about my experience going from service design consulting to doing the work in house at Capital One. We had more than 300 attendees at members day. Despite it now being two years since Adaptive Path was acquired by Capital One, people still don’t understand what that means. The most frequent question I get is are we still working with other clients, followed by are we planning to expand to Asia or Europe. The answer is no, because Adaptive Path as a company no longer exists. It is a team within Capital One. Everyone at Adaptive Path is a Capital One employee. Now that that’s clear, let’s move on.

Here are my big takeaways from the conference.

We design for the experience savvy person.
–Holger Hampf, BMW

A number of traditionally product oriented companies, like BMW, signaled that services are the future, and they’re trying to make the transition. I liked Hampf’s articulation of the “experience savvy person.” It’s true. People are more experience savvy. The bar is higher. And it really doesn’t matter what industry you’re in, the general expectation is the experience should be seamless, well considered, and maybe even delightful.

Think about value, not the product.
–Birgit Mager, President, SDN

This is maybe an extension of the shift from product to experience. But most companies still struggle with this one. We have product managers and product designers. Collectively, the world is very product oriented, likely a holdover from industrialization. Focusing on value will free you up to deliver in many ways, one of which may be a product, but maybe not.

A viable service is useless if it is not valuable.
–Harald Lamberts, Essense

Speaking of value, this statement supports a broader reaction to the bastardization of minimum viable product, or MVP. Again, organizations focus too much on speed over value and quality.

Start small, then learn. Not launch early and fix.
–Harald Lamberts.

Yes, yes, yes.

While I was thinking strategy, everyone else was shipping.
–Katie Koch, Spotify

Service design, design thinking, lean, and agile are all competing for attention in organizations. Many organizations have taken an extreme and perhaps inaccurate view on agile to simply mean shipping with speed. This interpretation can be at odds with service design’s more systemic and problem-framing centric approaches. So I loved this sentiment by Koch. We need to find a way for these various approaches to complement each other. I for one do not believe every required activity to produce great experiences fits into a sprint.

The magic of service design is the process.
–Judy Mellett, TELUS & Chris Ferguson, Bridgeable

If you’re having difficulty selling service design, this is why. I might change this statement slightly to: The magic of service design is the experience of the process. Only after has someone gone through the experience of service design (not just a workshop or even multi-day training) do they truly understand the power and the value.

As the field matures, we’re seeing experimentation in the way we organize. Should a service design team be independent or imbedded? Do we need service managers like we have product managers? Customer journey managers? Service Experience Officers? What does a modern service experience focused team look like?

With the right tools, people will solve the problem themselves.
–Johannes Landstorfer, IXDS

The need for service design is great, and the supply of service designers is small. To scale quickly, we will need to empower others to do the work themselves. Some of the basic service design tools, like journey maps and service blueprints, are simple enough to grasp (of course mastery is another thing). Studies continue to show autonomy to solve problems improves job satisfaction and increases productivity. Service design tools and autonomy to solve problems, may go a long way to creating better services.

If you’re not familiar with Daniel Kahneman’s Peak-end Rule, go look it up. It’s a great reminder that maximizing every moment of the experience is not the goal (this is why measuring individual touchpoints without greater context can be counterproductive). Frijters’ point complements Kahneman’s theory. Does this mean you should introduce friction in your experience? I’ll let you decide. But solving a problem for a customer creates higher NPS and brand loyalty.

It’s all moving from the front stage to the backstage.
–Birgit Mager, President, SDN

Yes it is. Service design is a full organization sport. It’s not just customer research and creating a vision. It’s including everything and everyone in the backstage, both in the process and the execution. For a long time, the community has been focused on the experience. We are evolving to realize the importance of the organizational structure, culture, processes, and employee experience on delivering a great service experience. There is much work to be done here.

The first customer is the organization.
–Paula Bello, Kone

Agreed. Understanding customer experience and needs can be relatively easy compared to wrangling the organizational forces required to deliver experiences to those customers. Spend time empathizing with the business, employees, and various non-customer stakeholders.

Evolution of the Practice

Lastly, I want to acknowledge that the definition of service design continues to evolve, as well as how we do it and with whom. Each year marks a leap in our capabilities, perspective, and the practice of service design. During her talk, Birgit Mager gave a nod to this by highlighting how her definition of service design has changed over the years.

“Service design creates services that are useful, usable, and desirable from the customer perspective and efficient, effective, and different from a provide perspective.” –2004

“Service design choreographs processes, technologies, and interactions within complex systems in order to co-create value for relevant stakeholders.” –2010

As we close out 2016 and move into another year, I expect we will continue to question, refine, and evolve this practice we’ve grown to call service design.

While only in its second year, I was really impressed with the Productized conference in Lisbon. I was there to run a four-hour Service Design Crash Course workshop and give the closing keynote, titled So You Want to be a Service Designer. I have run 14 conferences, so I know what it takes to pull off a good one. From the organization to the production to the quality of workshops and speakers, everything was top notch. I highly recommend it.

Teaching Service Design

During the 40-person workshop, I provided a quick overview of service design, and then led participants through three hands-on activities: journey mapping, service storming (an acting as prototyping method), and service blueprinting.

Activity 1 – Journey Mapping

Journey maps are becoming quite ubiquitous, even outside of the design world. Though many of my participants had not created one yet. I gave an overview of what a journey map does and some good times to use it in the design process. Then participants created one in small groups.

Activity 2 – Service Storming

A few years ago, Jared Cole and I created this activity based on an acting as prototyping method. We created some particular constraints, and I have been using it since as a method and workshop tool. Participants have 30 minutes to develop a 90-second skit to perform. This becomes the base for the next activity. Most people have never done this before, so it’s always good fun.

Activity 3 – Service Blueprinting

Service blueprints describe how a series of interactions are supported by different touchpoints, people, and processes. After providing an overview of the basic service blueprint elements, participants created a blueprint version of their service storming skit.

Talking Service Design

The talks were all great. Notably, there was an emphasis on understanding the vision you’re trying to achieve and why it matters, with a big emphasis on storytelling. Design is as much about defining the vision as it is making it real.

I gave the closing keynote (after Bruce Nussbaum, author of Creative Intelligence). I really loved that a service guy like myself was invited to speak at a product conference. I took the opportunity to structure content around the title of So You Want to be a Service Designer, which was inspired by Robert Reimann’s So You Want to be an Interaction Designer. I read that piece in graduate school a decade ago. It was originally written in 2001, I believe. It’s still relevant today. You should read it.

I’ll write more about the content of the talk in another post. Until then, you can view the slides.

The seventh annual Service Design Network Conference took place in New York on October 2-3, 2015, hosted at Parsons The New School. As a principal of the network, and the head of the SDN event board, I played a role in organizing the conference, moderated the opening panel, and helped keep everything running smoothly. Each year, new themes, questions, and insights emerge. Here are the ones that stood out to me.

People Need People

We live in an increasingly technological world, and often that means we lean heavily on technology to solve our challenges. Technology equals innovation, and innovation equals technology. Much service design work focuses on digital experiences only. A couple questions raised by attendees include: Are we in danger of defining service design as digital service design? Are we in danger of disenfranchising people? People still need people for reassurance and human connection. And service innovation can be void of technology, let’s not forget.

Small Agencies Under Siege

In 2014, the service design community was either shocked or inspired (or a bit of both) by Capital One’s acquisition of Adaptive Path. This was mentioned in several presentations. Some questioned whether this was the beginning of the end of small design agencies. What will happen as more organizations build internal service design functions? Will agencies be able to keep their talent? Will agencies be able to have as much impact as an internal team? (I have thoughts and experience with this, but will save that for another post.)

Discovery Focused vs Delivery Focused

This wasn’t widely discussed, but it hit a nerve with me. Much of service design work to date has been focused on discovery, research, ideation, and articulation of new service visions or elements. We don’t have many tools for service implementation and delivery. Can service design be both discovery focused and delivery focused? How can we get better at connecting the two? Jon Campbell from Continuum pointed out that most organizations overestimate their ability to implement. I completely agree. If we want to see our service visions implemented we need to focus more on service delivery. This will be a key arena for service design going forward.

What is a service designer?

During his talk, Mikal Hallstrup, Founder and Global CEO at Designit, stated, “I’m not a service designer.” His background is in product design. I also don’t call myself a service designer. But I do tell people I design services. My background is in interaction design. Many disciplines contribute to service design. Some people call themselves service designers. But what does that mean? What experience, background, or skills are required? Is a service designer that comes from a design background the same as one that comes from business and operations? If you want to open a debate, this is a good starter.

Nice Landing, Wrong Airport

While I understand the need to create a sense of urgency to get teams to move quickly and reach a goal, I often see the deadlines created to launch new features, products, and service experiences as arbitrary and counterproductive. So I loved this by Nick de Leon: “Delivering on time and on budget doesn’t move the dial for customers or the organization.” In other words, he said, “Nice landing, wrong airport.” Remember this the next time you’re rushing toward a deadline. What are you sacrificing to reach the deadline? What’s more important, the service experience or the deadline? Are you reinforcing positive organizational behavior?

No Overarching View

Sarah Brooks and Julia Kim from Veterans Affairs for the US Federal Government highlighted the need to have an overarching view of the service. Shockingly, most if not all organizations do not have a way to holistically look at the service they are providing. This means we patch over the existing system without really understanding the impacts upstream or downstream and end up with quite a mess. This long standing practice will ensure much service design work long into the future. It’s also why things like end-to-end journey maps, blueprints, and vision stories are mindblowingly innovative within most organizations.

Oncologies of Service

A couple speakers mentioned different oncologies of service, which connected with ideas I’ve had about creating a better categorization of services given the breadth of the service landscape. This is a model Terry Irwin and Cameron Tonkinwise from Carnegie Mellon University had in their presentation.

While I don’t think this captures everything, it’s simple and one way to think about types of services. Also, this provides a contrast to products.

Service Design is…

Here are a couple somewhat unconventional definitions of service design I noted.

“Service design is a restructuring of how society cares about people.” – Cameron Tonkinwise

Service Design Aims at Government

Paul Thurston and Anna Whicher of PDR pointed out that 28 percent of the SDN conference speakers came from the public sector. They noted that in the UK, service design is being applied to government contracts, and design skills are being written into government job posts. Here in the US, we also have more design being focused on government. Presenters Sarah Brooks with Veteran Affairs and Chelsea Mauldin from the Public Policy Lab are two examples. 18F, not present at the conference, is another. This is more evidence that one day service design will be business as usual.

I realize companies want to know how they’re doing and want feedback to improve their services. But I’m getting a little tired of the many post-interaction requests for feedback. I’m sure they’d “love” to hear from me. But after I analyze the content, language, appearance, and context of the message (As a service designer, I’m compelled. I assume normal people don’t do this.), I hit delete.

In this case, before I sent the easy-cheap-business-channel-of-choice message to the ether, a few things caught my attention.

“Dear Jamin,”

Do people still use “dear” in email? **

“Thanks for considering Lending Club.”

I’m not considering Lending Club. I’m a customer.

“To improve our product and service, we would love to hear feedback on your experience.”

Funny enough, people pay me money for this. Not sure I understand the value prop for me, but since you asked, it was fine. Maybe even unmemorable, as I can’t remember what action I may have taken to trigger this email. Don’t take this to mean I want it to be memorable. Fine is fine.

“Please share your thoughts by completing this brief survey – it should only take a few minutes:”

What’s that hyphen doing in the middle of these two sentences? Why isn’t it an em dash. I’d settle for an en dash because sometimes em dashes look too damn long. But the whole thing could be moot if we just made these two regular sentences.

Then there’s the colon, which should be a period, right? Because below…

“Survey link:”

Hey! Another colon! Obviously, the first colon is unnecessary, and dare I say a little awkward. Arguably, the survey link needs no introduction. But redundancy can be good for communication, so I’ll let it slide.

“Sincerely,”

Again, this is an email. “Sincerely” tells me we are not friends and do not have an established relationship. Though I’ve been a customer for more than a year. Two years? Clearly, both of us forget when we first met.

“Scott SanbornChief Operating OfficerLending Club”

Scott, hello! Have we met or emailed previously? How do you have the time to write to me? Shouldn’t you be running the business?

* (asterisk)

Since there is no other asterisk elsewhere, I’m not sure what this info is a caveat to specifically. So I’ll assume it’s the entire message, in which case we can lose the asterisk.

“LendingClub contracted CustomerSat, an independent marketing research firm, to conduct this survey.”

I’m not sure why this matters. I might actually prefer if Lending Club was asking me directly. Maybe a personal email from Scott.

** While I may be picking on Lending Club in this instance, many companies have similar practices, even my own. This doesn’t make it any less questionable.

And in case you’re asking, why don’t I just opt out? Well, because hitting delete is easier.

Last month I attended my seventh consecutive Service Design Network conference. This year’s conference was held in Stockholm, Sweden, and hosted more than 600 attendees. At the end of the conference, during the SDN management team’s closing remarks to the audience, I provided a quick summary of all the points made by the speakers, listed below.

Creating a great employee experience impacts the service experience.

Design is purposeful creativity.

Design is form giving.

Great designers care about the details.

Organizations don’t care about design. They care about results.

In service design, everyone should win.

We need tools to measure qualitative value.

Little extras can cause great impact.

We need to scale.

Service designers should say no more often.

Service designers should say yes more often. In every organization their is a VP of No.

If you partake in beer, chocolate, and coffee, these vices are brought to you by enterprise software (SAP).

We need destructive innovation.

We are stale, fat, and complacent.

One of the more interesting things I noticed at the conference is a bubbling tension between designers and non-designers who practice service design. The debate revolves around design craft and whether it’s necessary to consider yourself a service designer. While the dialogue didn’t fully explode, with service design touching all parts of the business, I foresee a battle over ownership and quality, especially when service design becomes a standard business practice.

Another item of note: Despite many speakers expressing a need to show impact, very few shared the impact of their work, or even shared work at all. Instead, it seems we are still making the case for service design rather than sharing successes, failures, and results from service design in action. While there are still many folks who talk service design more than do it, for those of us practicing, we need to talk about both the human and business impact we’re having as proof that service design is a better way.

In the context of the service design and service experience work I do, I’ve been much more focused on the way the services I interact with communicate with me. In this case, I wanted to communicate with US Airways and was presented with the following form, which asks for my Dividend Miles number, name (“Must match government ID”), address, and email just to send them a message for help. This is particularly ridiculous because:

I was signed in! Which means they already know who I am and all the above information.

I’m a Dividend Miles Gold Member! You love me, right?!

I only wanted to ask a question! So why all the security name-matching-gender questions? Read the second sentence: “We’re asking for your gender and date of birth as well, since that information is required by the TSA.” Is TSA screening my messages to US Air? Even if this makes sense in some weird business logic security way, this doesn’t make sense to REAL people (like me, I’m real). So find some way to tell me this that make sense. Or better, don’t say it and don’t require it because it doesn’t make sense.

I’ve never seen such an egregious contact form. I found it hard to believe this was real. But it is, right here.

Despite the hurdles, I filled out all the information so I could ask a question. Call me a sucker.

While I typically brew one-gallon all grain recipes, I got this Bomber Barley Wine recipe kit from Northern Brewer using a gift card I got for Christmas. Compared to all grain, Northern Brewer’s recipe kits are simpler and faster. Instead of creating the mash with the grain, you pretty much go straight to the boil using either a powder, as did this, or liquid. This cuts down about an hour of brewing time. Though because I mostly do all grain, this feels a bit like cheating. Continue reading →